Upgrade Time

TitianGerm

Hey guys,

With the announcement of the new RTX cards and a €1700 bonus coming from work this week I think it's time to upgrade.

1. What is your budget? Let's say €1500 but there's wiggle room. Ideally it'll be €1000 and proceeds from selling my current build.

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Gaming. Will be getting VR next year. Also be working from home in the coming months.

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? I'll use an unlicensed build for the moment.

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? Yes. See below for current PC specs.

5. Do you need a monitor? No. Have two Ultragear 27GL83A-B 27 (1440P & 144hz).

5a. If yes, what size do you need. N/A

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? [Keyboard/Mouse/Wireless Card/Card Reader/Speakers/etc.] N/A

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? N/A

8. How can you pay? PayPal, Revolut, Amazon Credit.

9. When are you purchasing? Let's say October to tie in with 3070/3080 launch.

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? Should be ok.


I will sell my current build but can pull parts for the new PC before doing this.

Case: NZXT H510 & Cougar Panzer - Will use the NZXT for new build.
PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 550 G3, 80 Plus GOLD 550W.
Motherboard: AS Rock AB350 Pro.
RAM: 32GB (16GB x2) Ballistix Sport 3000Mhz CL16 (Can reuse this if worthwhile as I've 8GB spare RAM to include in the build to sell).
CPU: Ryzen 7 1700.
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Freezer 34 eSports DUO (Can reuse as I've another CPU cooler to use in build I sell).
GPU: RTX 2060 FE.
M2 Drive: Crucial MX500.
SSD: 500GB Samsung 860 (Will reuse).
HDD: 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM (Will reuse).
Fans: 2x Corsair SP120 & 2x Corsair ML140 (Will reuse as I've other fans to put in build I sell).

If anyone can give a rough guide on what I could list the PC for sale at as well it would be much appreciated.

Edit: just to say I've no problem buying the GPU and PSU now and doing the rest of the upgrade once the new Ryzen CPUs release.

Homelander

There is really no need to sell the whole PC. Just get a 3700X and slap an RTX3070 in there, budget spent, ton of effort saved.

TitianGerm

Homelander wrote: »

There is really no need to sell the whole PC. Just get a 3700X and slap an RTX3070 in there, budget spent, ton of effort saved.

3700X on my motherboard? Would that be worth it?

Squidgy Black

TitianGerm wrote: »

3700X on my motherboard? Would that be worth it?

Should be perfectly fine with a bios update (although I'd probably just double check the ASRock website before committing).

Homelander

Yes, board will support it with a bios update.

New range of CPU's will likely be faster, like Ryzen 2 was faster than Ryzen, but the 3700X is really an excellent CPU.

I get wanting a new board/CPU, and it could make sense, but the 3700X eliminates the hassle of a new build and also having to try and flog parts on Adverts or wherever where you probably won't get great prices.

Selling the 2060 and 1700 will even cover a good chunk of the cost of the 3700X/RTX 3070.

TitianGerm

Ok I'll take that on board. Just to note that my M2 drive is not an NVME drive.

jebidiah

Hijacking a bit here. Similar boat with a first gen Ryzen 5 1600 with a Gigabyte AB350M. Could I also just whack a 3700 and 3070 into my rig? I do have a 750W PSU or is the 3080 likely to suffer from cpu bottleneck?

Squidgy Black

jebidiah wrote: »

Hijacking a bit here. Similar boat with a first gen Ryzen 5 1600 with a Gigabyte AB350M. Could I also just whack a 3700 and 3070 into my rig? I do have a 750W PSU or is the 3080 likely to suffer from cpu bottleneck?

Not possible to tell yet in terms of bottlenecking, although a 3700x wouldn't come close to bottlenecking a 2080ti, so I doubt a 3080 will be that much of a massive jump up (without RTX and DLS etc)

TitianGerm

Ok been looking around a bit more and I think I've settled on the RTX3070 and honestly I think I'd just rather a new build now.

So looking at a few sites this morning I see the following

https://www.awd-it.co.uk/msi-mag-b550m-bazooka-matx-motherboard.html

R5 3600 & B550 motherboard for £275.
WD Blue SN550 1TB for £100 on Amazon.
RTX 3070 FE from Nvidia for £499

Then add a new PSU which would allow an upgrade to a more powerful GPU down the line for around £100 should bring me in under £1000.

I know the CPU isn't as good as the 3700 but it would allow me to see about upgrading to next gen Ryzen early next year.

Seems a reasonable cost to upgrade and even if I sold my current PC for €500 it's a cheap upgrade on every part?

Wonda-Boy

Just remember that the 3070 has the slower memory then the 3080....just in case it slipped under the radar.

TitianGerm

Wonda-Boy wrote: »

Just remember that the 3070 has the slower memory then the 3080....just in case it slipped under the radar.

No I spotted that alright. And the higher VRAM is a plus as well. Just when I game at 1440P and no intention of going 4K I didn't think it was worth the extra?

Whatever GPU I get this time will do me for 3-4 years and the same with any other upgrades.

K.O.Kiki

Get a 3080 instead if you want 3-4 years @ 1440p.

bobbyy gee

Just add new GPU card and more memory
Back up hard drive and reinstall windows
Sell your old gpu you will probably have to upgrade power supply

TitianGerm

bobbyy gee wrote: »

Just add new GPU card and more memory
Back up hard drive and reinstall windows
Sell your old gpu you will probably have to upgrade power supply

I've already got 32GB of memory, hardly need more than that?

TitianGerm

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Get a 3080 instead if you want 3-4 years @ 1440p.

How long do you think I'd get out of the 3070 if I went with that?

TitianGerm

TitianGerm wrote: »

How long do you think I'd get out of the 3070 if I went with that?

I'm on an 1080Ti years and it still lashes through games at 1440p.
It should do you quite a while.

TitianGerm

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I'm on an 1080Ti years and it still lashes through games at 1440p.
It should do you quite a while.

Cheers Grahamer. It's hard to know what to do to be honest. Either way I think coming from the 2060 I'll see a decent jump in quality to either a 3070 or a 3080.

SweetCaliber

TitianGerm wrote: »

Cheers Grahamer. It's hard to know what to do to be honest. Either way I think coming from the 2060 I'll see a decent jump in quality to either a 3070 or a 3080.

Yes a massive jump.

I mean the 3070 will do you fine for 1440p no doubt. But if you plan to keep it in there long term then the 3080 would probably be better suited.

TitianGerm

TitianGerm wrote: »

Ok been looking around a bit more and I think I've settled on the RTX3070 and honestly I think I'd just rather a new build now.

So looking at a few sites this morning I see the following

https://www.awd-it.co.uk/msi-mag-b550m-bazooka-matx-motherboard.html

R5 3600 & B550 motherboard for £275.
WD Blue SN550 1TB for £100 on Amazon.
RTX 3070 FE from Nvidia for £499

Then add a new PSU which would allow an upgrade to a more powerful GPU down the line for around £100 should bring me in under £1000.

I know the CPU isn't as good as the 3700 but it would allow me to see about upgrading to next gen Ryzen early next year.

Seems a reasonable cost to upgrade and even if I sold my current PC for €500 it's a cheap upgrade on every part?

Update time:

I sold my current PC today for €600 and bringing my Xbox One X, Kinect and adapter to CEX during the week and getting about €260. It's been a paperweight for the last few months so no point keeping it around any longer.

So with all that I've bought a the following

16GB Crucial Ballistix 3600MHz CL16 Ram - €85
WD Blue SN550 1TB NVME - €110
FRACTAL ION+ 760P 80+PLAT PSU - €127
MSI B550 Tomahawk Motherboard - €177
Ryzen 5 3600 - €200

Will upgrade the CPU next year so that's only a stopgap for the moment. Ended up with the Tomahawk rather than the Bazooka motherboard because the Tomahawk seemed to get better reviews. Bought from Scan rather than AWD even though it worked out a little more expensive but heard bad things about AWDs customer service. Will get about €40 back from MSI cashback as well so that's a nice bonus.

Now to wait for the 17th to grab a 3080

TitianGerm

TitianGerm wrote: »

Update time:

I sold my current PC today for €600 and bringing my Xbox One X, Kinect and adapter to CEX during the week and getting about €260. It's been a paperweight for the last few months so no point keeping it around any longer.

So with all that I've bought a the following

16GB Crucial Ballistix 3600MHz CL16 Ram - €85
WD Blue SN550 1TB NVME - €110
FRACTAL ION+ 760P 80+PLAT PSU - €127
MSI B550 Tomahawk Motherboard - €177
Ryzen 5 3600 - €200

Will upgrade the CPU next year so that's only a stopgap for the moment. Ended up with the Tomahawk rather than the Bazooka motherboard because the Tomahawk seemed to get better reviews. Bought from Scan rather than AWD even though it worked out a little more expensive but heard bad things about AWDs customer service. Will get about €40 back from MSI cashback as well so that's a nice bonus.

Now to wait for the 17th to grab a 3080

Seeing as I'm doing a fresh build would it be worth my while getting a Gen 4.0 NVME as a boot drive?

Thinking it could be used for Windows and all my programmes and maybe the odd game that I play a lot and that's it.

I'd then use the WD Blue as the main game drive. Would it be worth it?

From reading up on the B550 Tomahawk I think it should support the Gen 4 SSD in the top M2 slot and then the Gen 3 in the bottom M2 slot.

Samuel T. Cogley

The streaming technology that's supposedly coming may make use of very fast SSDs so it might be worth it down the line, if you're willing to get one big enough to fit your games on also.

Slots are as you've described.

TitianGerm

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

The streaming technology that's supposedly coming may make use of very fast SSDs so it might be worth it down the line, if you're willing to get one big enough to fit your games on also.

Slots are as you've described.

Was thinking of just grabbing a 500GB, maybe 1TB.

I assume the streaming tech is the one where the GPU accelerates decompression?

Samuel T. Cogley

TitianGerm wrote: »

Was thinking of just grabbing a 500GB, maybe 1TB.

I assume the streaming tech is the one where the GPU accelerates decompression?

It's the streaming of game data straight to the GPU like on the consoles. nVidia have a similar tech on the 30 series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E98hC9e__Xs Skip to 22:50

TitianGerm

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

It's the streaming of game data straight to the GPU like on the consoles. nVidia have a similar tech on the 30 series.

Might be worth it so.

Could have my main games on the Gen 4 and all my others on the Gen 3. I'd say 500GB would be loads. I'm usually only playing through one or two games at a time.

Any recommendations on one? I'm looking at Corsair or Sabrant.

Samuel T. Cogley

TitianGerm wrote: »

Might be worth it so.

Could have my main games on the Gen 4 and all my others on the Gen 3. I'd say 500GB would be loads. I'm usually only playing through one or two games at a time.

Any recommendations on one? I'm looking at Corsair or Sabrant.

I was watching a round up there as one is on the wishlist. From what I can gather they're much of a muchness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MliU7mKGKY&t